


Sick

by rikyl



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Episode: Flu Season, F/M, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-24
Updated: 2011-05-24
Packaged: 2018-10-18 06:31:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10611198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikyl/pseuds/rikyl
Summary: Flu Season AU for this prompt: "Leslie tries to have sex with Ben while crazy feverish."Originally written for the old NBC kink meme on LJ.





	

Of course Ben isn't happy that Leslie is sick. But a tiny part of him isn't as unhappy as maybe he should be about the sudden opportunity he has to be there for her--starting with touching her forehead with the back of his hand in a way that's not the least bit sexual, but is a tiny bit intimate just the same.

"You're burning up," he tells her.

"You're burning up, whaaaat?" she answers nonsensically, and there's a gleam in her eyes that's probably just the fever, but that he wants to think is flirtatious. He makes an effort not to react to the fact that she basically just told him he was hot, even if that wasn't what she had meant at all.

A little while later, he leads her into the hospital, one hand on her back to steady her. As they go down the hallway she kind of leans into him, and he practically has a complete out-of-body experience. He has lain awake so many nights thinking about the feel of her skin and the weight of her next to him, and this tiny hint of it makes him ache all over. Before he realizes what he's doing, he lets his hand slide down to her waist, coming to rest firmly against the top edge of her hipbone, and she lets him.

When an intake nurse mistakes him for Leslie's significant other, he doesn't correct her, and he puts his cell number down on an in-case-of-emergency contact form. It's better than admitting that he's nobody, just a creepy coworker with his hand where it shouldn't be. Then he gets the hell out of there, feeling like for a fool for allowing himself that bit of playing pretend.

\--

"Give it up for Scott Bakula!" Leslie introduces him, and his brain scatters in a million weird directions as he tries to remember whether Scott Bakula was someone women found attractive and what that might mean for Leslie to call him that. All the while they're switching places at the podium, with him steadying her wobbly self while trying not to feel her up in front of the entire Chamber of Secrets. Commerce. The entire Chamber of Commerce.

It shouldn't be an issue. Not feeling your coworker up at a business meeting should never be something anyone has to make an effort not to do. But her speech had been pretty amazing, and if anything could turn Ben Wyatt on, it was a woman who could kick ass under pressure. As he starts to take questions, he sees her disappear out the back door; speaking of things that shouldn't be an issue, he's pretty glad all the sudden for the shelter of the podium just now.

When the meeting's over, he's surprised to find her slumped against a wall out in the hallway, her head resting on her knees. She looks up at him with wide crazy eyes. “Did the magic potion work? Did we get our three wishes?”

“Er … yes. Everything’s fine. Leslie, do you need a ride back to the hospital?” He helps her up, but she’s so off-balance that she falls against him, landing with her forehead against his chest, one hand gripping either side of his shirt. He glances around in a panic to see if anyone is seeing this, but no one’s paying any attention at all. He puts an arm loosely around her, strokes her gently in the small of her back as she rests against him. After a few moments, they rearrange their arms again so he can help her out to his car.

He gets Leslie’s phone away from her to call Ann, who tells him Leslie’s been rehydrated and just needs to sleep off the extra flu meds, which she can do at home. Ann also supplies him with the address, a good thing since Leslie will only say that she lives at Fraggle Rock.

On the way there, he tries to calm himself, tries to think strictly professional thoughts and not focus on the fact that he is alone with Leslie, that he is going to her house, that he has instructions to put her to bed. He walks her to her door with the best intentions of getting her settled and getting out as quickly as possible without being impolite.

Just inside, she breaks away from him. “I’m so hot. Are you hot? I am burning up. It’s a jillion degrees in here. More than that. What’s bigger than a jillion?”

“That’s not a real number,” he says distractedly, as she strips off her blazer to reveal a sleeveless blouse. Before he knows what’s happening, she’s stripping that off too. He catches a glimpse of deep-pink lace, and his eyes quickly fly up to the ceiling, but he’s only human and they flick back to her involuntarily in time to see her reach for the zipper on her pants.

It’s an emergency situation, so he doesn’t think, he just acts. His right hand flies to her wrist, stops it before it reaches her fly, while his left hand goes to her back, freezes on her bare skin, instantaneously rethinks the situation and settles tentatively somewhere between her shoulder blades.

“Okay, you don’t want to do that,” he hears himself say as if from far away. “Let’s get you to the couch so you can lay down, and I’ll, um, I’ll get you a blanket. You should really cover up.”

It works, they get there, and everything is under control. He’s just going to grab that blanket, throw it over her, and get the hell out of there. Ann can come take care of her friend, because this is just too … this is just really not a good idea for him to be here right now.

Except when she lays down, she doesn’t let go of him, the result being that she pulls him down onto the couch with her. He lands sort of perched on the edge, leaning forward over her, her arm snuggly wrapped around his back. He’s stronger than her, and part of him knows that he’s not really trapped here. He could worm his way out and stick to the plan. But she’s staring up at him, a thoughtful expression on her face, and he can’t help it, he’s her captive.

“Scott, don’t leave me,” she says earnestly.

Ben lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Leslie,” he says gently. “It’s Ben. Ben Wyatt, your—” the word coworker sticks in his throat. “—friend.”

Recognition finally lights up her face, which is simultaneously reassuring and terrifying. Does he really want her to come to her senses at this exact moment, with her half undressed and him leaning over her, his inconvenient erection once again bulging against his pants? She’d be mortified, or possibly furious if she didn’t remember how they got here.

But she doesn’t look unhappy. “You’re Benji Wyatt,” she says, in that same surprised, absurdly awed voice she used all those months ago when he first admitted who he was. “The mayor of Partridge, Minnesota.”

He smile-winces, and he’s about to remind her reflexively of how that detail ruined his life, but it doesn’t seem entirely relevant at this moment, while he’s trying to figure out where it’s safe to put his hands and keep himself from looking anywhere he shouldn’t be looking. His fingers end up lightly stroking her hair, because it seems like one of the safest things they can do at this moment. “Yeah, um, look, I should probably be—”

He trails off, because she’s smiling at him dreamily now, and maybe she doesn’t want him to go? “I have a picture of you on the wall by my bed,” she confesses quietly and giggles girlishly. “It’s behind my calendar so my mom doesn’t see it.”

She looks so pretty then, smiling at him in a way he’s always wanted her to smile at him, her cheeks still flushed with fever, golden curls framing her face. She looks somehow younger all the sudden, and—it takes him a moment to catch up to what she’s just said. That she’s not smiling like that at Ben Wyatt, state auditor, but at Benji Wyatt, 18-year-old mayor.

She had a picture of him by her bed. He absorbs that, exhaling slowly. Somehow ever since he walked through Leslie’s front door, it feels like he’s only breathing out, never taking air back in, and he’s starting to feel lightheaded.

“I look at it sometimes, wondering what it would be like to kiss you, Benji,” she admits shyly, flirtatiously, and he wants to tell her how many times he’s thought about kissing her too. Constantly. He has thought about it constantly.

Her grip on him loosens, but instead of pulling away, he somehow feels himself settling down closer to her. She starts running her fingers lightly up and down his shirt, pulls the shirttails up out of his pants so she can touch the bare skin of his back, and he goes very still. The soft shyness vanishes from her face as she lifts her head slightly and brings her lips up to his.

His mind knows there is something wrong with this situation, but his lips have a mind of their own, and all they apparently know is how to respond to the lush giving miracle they have unwittingly encountered. The power of that single-mindedness quickly overtakes everything else, and responsible state auditor Ben Wyatt is lost. He settles down against her, tangles his fingers in her hair, and kisses her back with everything that he has.

He is not going to catch the flu. He is not going to have to face her at the office tomorrow. He’s not even expecting to get past second base. It is 1994, and they are two horny teenagers making out on the couch. He kisses her like Benji would have kissed her: passionate, reckless, and somehow cocky and deeply insecure at the same time. She answers him back, just as hungry and sloppy and eager. Their tongues tangle and explore each other’s mouths with a thoroughness and enthusiasm rarely engaged in by adults. Theirs hands roam greedily but self-consciously, avoiding all the places they really want to go.

They make out like making out is the point and not just a step on the way to something else.

When he thinks of touching her breast, it’s accompanied by the peculiarly childlike calculation of how much he can get away with, how far she’ll let him get. As he brushes the underside of her lace bra, her hand closes on his wrist, but instead of pushing him away, she pulls him in, guiding his hand to cup her fullness. In that moment, he might as well be a teenaged virgin, because suddenly he cannot remember ever having his hand on another woman’s breast. It feels like winning the lottery or meeting a supermodel or some other fantastic thing that never happens to real people.

It feels like touching Leslie Knope’s breast.

And then without warning, she is moving her hand to his crotch. Her fingers push into his pants and close around him, and for the first time that night, he notices himself breathing inward. It’s a sharp gasp that shakes his whole body.

He pulls back to look at her, and she’s smiling at him again, a weird combination of heat and nervousness and desire and innocence beaming out of those wide eyes. “My mom works late. It’s just us,” she murmurs huskily. “Do you want to?”

God, he wants to. Wants to more than anything he can ever remember wanting.

But he's somehow stopped kissing her, and just like that the illusion is broken. He knows they’re not a couple of reckless kids. They’re coworkers, and friends, and … maybe something more, someday, if he’s lucky, but not like this. She’s sick, she's not herself, and this thing he’s letting happen, it’s … it’s sick, that’s what it is.

Reluctantly, he pulls himself up to sit on the edge of the couch, as her hand slips away from him and her face falls in a way that pulls at his resolve.

“Leslie,” he says, trying to catch his breath, trying to think of way to say yes and no to her at the same time. “It’s not you, believe me. I just don’t think you’re thinking clearly right now.” He reaches for the throw blanket on the back of the armchair and starts to cover her up with it. She pulls it up to her chin protectively, looking vulnerable and disheveled, and he’s suddenly really glad he hasn’t taken advantage of her any more than he just did.

He smiles down at her wistfully, runs a hand roughly through his hair, and his voice sounds ragged when he says, “If this is still what you want tomorrow, let me know.”

She considers him for a moment, her face softening from confusion to warmth. “You’re a good guy, Ben,” she says finally. “I always thought you would be.”

When he gets to his car, he sits there gripping the steering wheel tightly as he struggles to pull himself together. In a fit of frustration, he punches it sharply with the palms of his hands—for letting this go too far, for not letting it go as far as he wanted. For feeling this way at all.

It’s not until he finally puts the key in the ignition that he realizes the last thing she had called him was Ben, not Benji.


End file.
